MODE CLASSIFICATION IN PRACTICE

Chapter:

CHAPTER 3 Retheorizing Music

Source:

MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

As continually emphasized in this discussion, modal theory arose out of an attempt at classifying the existing Gregorian chant,
particularly the antiphons, as an aid to mastering an enormous body of material that had somehow to be committed to melodic
memory. Modal theory was thus one of the very many aspects of medieval music-making that originated, very humbly, as mnemotechnics (memory aids). Every chant was eventually assigned a modal classification in the tonaries, and eventually in the graduals
and antiphoners themselves, including the modern chant books from which some of the examples in the previous chapters were
taken. Let us now cast an eye back over some of those examples and see how modal classification worked in practice.